The Mind At Work

In understanding this piece about the working waitress, just reiterates my thought about jobs in this country. Many of the same skill set are used in a number of different jobs. The correlation drawn between many employment that individuals have is really not all that different. In the Mike Rose piece, the first characteristic that caught my eye in regards to the skill set needed as a waitress "is the ability to think on your feet." A waitress has to be able to do a number of different things all at the same time. In regards to teaching the same can be said. A classroom teacher will have a number of different characteristics to negotiate through. A teacher maybe teaching a class and questions might start coming the teachers way from students. The teacher must be able to negotiate the question and try to come up with answers or answer the questions to the best of his/her ability. That is answer and think on the fly.
The next correlation I came to between the waitress and teachers in the Rose piece was about the waitress getting different orders at different times. They had the example of all requests for coffee don't come at the same time. I see the same things happen in classrooms. Students questions can come at different times of a lesson. I thought about how students learn and there understanding the information. One student may understand the lesson at one time and another student may learn the information in minutes later. The question that they come up with when they begin to understand will come at two different times. The teacher has to remember all the question and learn to deal with demands at different times. Not everything in a class room will happen at the same time. The waitress and the teacher will have to juggle many different request at any one time.
I thought the most telling commonality between the correlation I made between the teacher and the waitress was not from the job itself. However, it came from the people that surrounded a teacher and waitress. The waitress described the types if people and types of personalities that surrounded the waitress. The waitress had to deal with people and personalities that she did not like in the eyes of earning a living. The same can be said of teachers. There may be times when a students personality or opinions may not mess with that of the teacher. However, it is the job of the teacher to teach and not be effected by the problems around them.